Akin
by FearandLoathingXIX
Summary: Inspired by and for the Lemon Full Commando contest. NatsumexMikan, AU erotica. Friends, she said. Friends. An Officer of the Nation and an Alician prisoner of war interned as a prostitute. She really WAS a strange one.


This was initially written under parameters of the 'Lemon Full Commando' Contest published by the residents of 'Per-V' street (Vione, Sakuraheartz and Cupcakes.

_However_, like many things of mine, what I had intended to be a straight up super-explicit lemon to curdle everyone's whiskers decided it did not want to _be _the aforementioned. It decided it wanted to be something else entirely, although it's still within the contest's rules.

Consider it an entrant, but I do not expect it to gain much notice simply because it is so much _more _than just a lemon. I think I'm losing the ability to PWP effectively.

Oh and as a disclaimer (other than I don't own it lol), this is _erotica_, pure and unfiltered female-written erotica. It is not trying to be the most realistic disappointments-and-all portrayal of sex that ever there is meant to be really, really good sex, the kind that you don't experience often in the real world.

More frequently (in _my _experience at least) you can get perfect _sections _of sex. The perfect foreplay and the perfect oral or the perfect actual sex can happen, but it's not likely that they all happen _together_. In (this) erotica, they do. That is _why _it's erotica.

* * *

Natsume shuddered as he stepped inside. This was the last place he wanted to be. His newly starched uniform was stiff and uncomfortable, and the acrid, humid air of the room made his skin crawl and sweat.

He was a Lieutenant, an _Officer_, goddamit, not a gigolo or a pimp. The Nation of Fire could yell jump and he'd ask how fucking high on the battlefield, but he was old-fashioned in that he liked to keep his personal and private habits to _himself. _

But you didn't say 'No' to the NoF, not if you wanted your job, your status or your life to stay in tact. So if they ordered you to visit one of the FPCs with an appointment already booked then you said 'Yes Sir' and prayed that your girl didn't have any STDs.

Because this wasn't about pleasure – no, don't mistake that. This was all business. The Nation of Fire, for those who didn't know, was a totalitarian state controlled by a centralized bureau known as The Supreme Board of Directors and Associates, or, for short, just 'The Board', and for the last three years they had been waging a terrifyingly successful war against the Kingdom of Alice to the South.

Lt. Natsume Hyuuga ought to know, he had been fighting it: Armed divisions, of course, not the Personnel divisions.

– Armed engaged with the Kingdom's opposing forces on the battlefield: soldier against soldier. Personnel concentrated on the rest of the population; they oversaw the transportation of children and women from areas far beyond the lines of combat. Children were placed in mass-fostering institutes, or preferably housed with a family within the Nation; if they were young enough, they never even knew they'd been taken.

Women and girls were put to work, or ended up in the FPCs: The Female Prisoner Camps. They were comparable to state-run brothels, except the girls weren't paid and they were technically prisoners. 'Technically' they said, because all they have to do is look pretty, lie on their backs, and get pregnant. They were even permitted to raise their own children in coalition with the adjacent childcare facilities that all FPCs travelled with.

The theory was that by the forceful breeding between nationals of both warring nations, eventually when the entire territory of Alice had been conquered there would be a generation of children half NoF and half Alician waiting. It was in its worst form institutionalized rape, but for a girl who did what she was told there was no further ill treatment at the hands of the authorities.

Hell, many of them were hookers _before _they came here. A move to a NoF facility was actually an improvement for some. Not that it made them any more acceptable.

Not that Natsume would know, though. He held nothing but disgust for flesh-peddlers, and had never paid for sex in his life. However, orders were exactly that – _orders, _and when the Captain above him wanted the prodigal and intelligent young Lieutenant H. to go and impregnate a few girls at an FPC. to ensure that such good genes would not be wasted, Natsume didn't have much of a fucking choice. The appointment had been made before he could object to it.

He knew that he couldn't even just go to the room and sit there in silence for twenty minutes. The girls were specifically instructed to make sure _all _of their customers got a 'happy ending', and would try anything to get a reluctant soldier to give over. There were rumours of cameras in the rooms and random checks on rooms in the middle of the night, but generally it was simply because it was in the best interests of the girls to get the men to sleep with them. The faster they got pregnant the easier their life was – pregnant girls didn't have to prostitute any more, and mostly lived in comfort until their child was old enough to go into the daycare facilities.

"Name?" a bored-looking woman with a toddler on her hip asked him, tapping her long, artificial nails against the counter top Natsume had so reluctantly approached.

"Hyuuga, N, Lieutenant," Natsume drolled, propping an elbow up on the counter and leaning against it irately. Let the Army decide everything else, but at least let him choose where he leaves his come, he thought resignedly as the woman keyed him into the accounts.

"Oh yeah, here you are," she said bawdily, eyeing him up and down rather intensely. "Lucky Mikan," she commented jealously, picking up a key card between her talons and sliding it across to the handsome, dark haired Officer with the fire-red eyes. "Room four," she instructed, jiggling her toddler as it started to whinge, and Natsume walked off more to be away from the crying child than out of eagerness to meet his appointment.

He slid his card key into the door with the '4' on the front and waited for the lock to slide open, which it did with a loud clunk. He pushed down the handle and stepped inside, instantly reeling at the heady smell of sex in the room.

"Ahh, you must by my four 'o clock," a soft, surprisingly young voice announced from across the room, and Natsume tried to make out her form in the dim light, but the brightness of the hall pouring in behind him threw only his own shadow into clarity, and left the girl lurking slyly in the shadows. She was probably ugly, he thought spitefully.

"_Unfortunately_," he answered acridly, and reached across the wall to flick on the lights, which flooded the room and caused the girl to wince.

"Hey! You're ruining the mood!" the girl – Mikan, he assumed her name must be – barked as the brightness throbbed in her eyes.

"What mood, you're a whore," he said bluntly, but in her defence she did not even blink.

"Shut the door at least," she told him, and out of reflex he obeyed. Too much time in uniform, he thought. He removed his cap, but nothing else, and fell into a wicker chair nearby. He tried to ignore the girl very obviously staring at him, and looked around the room instead.

It was gaudy and tacky to the last detail, from the lurid colours of the wall – clitoris pink, he named it – to the furry restraints on the bed and the black silk sheets. It was all disgusting.

He half wished that _she _had been disgusting too, but Mikan was no older than he was, and a slim, pretty creature with her hair in bunches that made her _look _a good few years younger. She had a slight Alician accent; just enough to twist the sound of each word, until it was almost as if she didn't speak _quite _the same language as the rest of them, but one that was infinitely more beautiful and exotic than the blunt, commanding language that he knew.

"What crawled up _your_ ass and died?"

Perhaps 'beautiful' was too strong a word.

"What do you mean?" he asked, his tone jumping up and becoming richer, more high-class as he tried to establish his obvious superiority.

"Well you don't exactly look overjoyed," she pointed out, lolling back on the corner of the bed, where she was perched, and twisting up a leg to finger at some blemish she perceived there. "You're not gay, are you?" she questioned with a chirp, starting up as if the idea had crept up and surprised her in person.

"_No_," he hissed, knotting together his hands and scowling at the tempestuous creature that sprawled before him. "I just don't like whores." He did not expect Mikan's delicately shaped eyebrows to jump up her forehead in such a way at his slander. She seemed more amused than insulted.

"Who says I'm a whore?" she proposed, sliding over to her other side, which caused the patterned silk robe that she had slung around her body to slip apart over her leg and expose a vast length of her creamy thigh to him. He did not know if it was intentional simply because she did not seem to _care_. "Why can't we be friends?"

"Friends?" Natsume repeated quizzically, as if he'd never heard the word before in his life.

"Yes, friends," she said brightly, sitting up and covering herself once more. "I like to make friends with as _many _people as I can!" Natsume snorted, then laughed at her own innocent confusion toward his reaction. Could she _really _be serious, he wondered in amusement.

"You like making friends, huh?" he said dryly, and in spite of his sarcastic and biting tone she nodded eagerly.

"I'm Mikan," she said, pointing at herself brightly and flashing Natsume a diamond smile. Natsume sat and sweat into his chair for a few silent moments, considering his answer carefully.

"Natsume," he finally offered, deciding that a name was just a name, so there was no point in being trite about it. As soon as he'd said it, Mikan bounced to her feet, her breasts bobbing freely underneath her robe. When she began to bound across the room Natusme suspected that she was going to throw herself on him and attempt to start the... _fornication_, but all he found was a honey-scented palm extended in front of him.

She wanted to shake his hand.

"Hey!" she snapped when he burst out laughing again. "What's your problem? Eh?" Her accent came out stronger when she was angered, and partly entranced by the foreign vowels, partly because it was against his upbringing to be so rude, he took her hand in his and shook it.

"A _pleasure_ to meet you..." he drawled sarcastically – just because he wouldn't reject a handshake didn't mean he wouldn't poke fun at it in these circumstances.

"Well that's better," Mikan pronounced energetically, and releasing his hand crawled onto the arm of the chair Natsume was in and put her feet in his lap to balance herself as she planted her pert and forthright bottom on the side.

"Sit down, make yourself comfortable," Natsume continued unwelcomingly, his tone so dry it would've taken every bottle of lube in this obscene building to get anything less than a crackle out of it.

"Is that stick up your ass army grade too?" Mikan jested, pawing her feet in his lap absent-mindedly. They were soft, unbelievably soft, and neatly pedicured; she didn't spend that much time on them, he reminded himself, so no wonder.

"The Army can't _order _arousal," he told her curtly. "I don't fuck whores," he added as an afterthought.

"Hmph," Mikan sighed through her nose almost wearily. "Is that so, _Na_–tsu–_me?" _she repeated his name as if it were a new and exciting toy; an exotic treat, to roll across her foreign-born tongue and savour until it had been exhausted.

"Yes," he replied stiffly. Even if she did have that enchanting way of speaking, it was hardly enough to persuade him into bed with her, and he would not be swayed by so little.

"Oh well," she huffed, her toes wriggling against his leg like she simply could _not _be still for one moment. "You probably wouldn't have been worth it anyway," she remarked. "I know your type. All attitude and no skill."

Natsume snorted contemptuously. "The whore enjoys her job, then?" he questioned rudely.

"I like to screw," she replied casually, as if it was simply a note to be made next to her favourite colour and food preferences. "I could make it good for you," she commented, and Natsume's hand, which had been slowly moving towards the back of her feet in investigation, sunk sharply back down to his side again.

"Tch," he scoffed, and she rolled her feet across his thigh in response.

"Oh yeah? Try me," she dared. "This is my _job_, Naa-tsume. I know more about sex than any girl you might have rolled in the hay with back home." He tried not to scowl, but he was mildly concerned that she might not have just got lucky, but actually read his country-boy background from him with such a short exchange.

"You were a whore before you came here, then?" he inquired, expecting the answer to be yes.

"No, I lived with my parents," she replied cheerfully. "I mended clothes with my mother until your armies came through Kairin, then I was selected to come here for my looks." He was reluctant to admit he was surprised to her, but in the end he could not resist pursuing the question.

"So then what? You just learnt to love peddling away your body like it was nothing?" he put to her coldly, his disgust at what she did plainly evident.

"Better here than dead, Natsume," she said, and her tone had a tough edge to it, like a blade tempered in a great heat. "Better willing than raped. What choice did I have? This may be a war for us both as nations, but it is _my _homeland that is being crushed and destroyed... _my _family and friends killed by you and _your_ men, or sent away from me as I have been from them..." she became angered as she went on, and her accent twisted further into her voice until he couldn't clearly distinguish the words she said.

"It is _my _life that has been ruined, and you _dare _to come and criticise me for what I do?" she yelled, and in a moment of fury she reached out and slapped him hard across the face.

Natsume was not a humble man, he knew, but he could tell that he had overstepped himself. It was not his position to criticise what a girl of the Kingdom he was professionally employed in fighting against had to do to stay alive. She had struck him, yes – a whore had struck an Officer, but he could plainly see he deserved it.

"I apologize," he said quietly, in humiliation. "I had not thought of it that way." Of course he hadn't; he'd been too self-absorbed in his own opinions to even consider hers. Mikan was silent for a moment, but did not move away from him.

"Apology accepted!" she chirped spontaneously, perking up again like a bird rustling its feathers, and resuming the animated buzz of motion that had been half-way entertaining and half-way annoying to him for the past ten minutes.

"That's it?" he questioned scathingly. He had expected her to scream, shout, to throw him out of her room and let him go back to the barracks in peace.

"That's it," she repeated with a grin, and slowly her movements slowed, until her jitters were more of a languorous crawl across his body. "I'd be a lot more troubled if I held grudges with _every _man who had insulted me. You said you were sorry, and you meant it. That's good enough for me." She was actually in his lap now, and Natsume would be a liar to say that he hadn't missed the feel of a woman against him, but that persistent voice in his head told him over and over that this was all an act, that she was just a whore and behaved this way for _all _of the men she had to fuck.

Her lips brushed up against his ear as she leant up and brought her mouth close to the side of his face. "So what do you say?" she tempted sweetly, her legs already apart as she was knelt across his lap, and he knew for a fact that the robe she wore was _all _she wore. All he'd have to do is reach out and he could feel her, and he found that part of him _wanted _to, it really, really wanted to.

He moved and held her by the hips, then pushed back gently, guiding her off the chair until she had to stand, and he followed her, reaching almost a head above her in height.

"I think I should go," he said uncomfortably, the two conflicting halves of his id battling as viciously as the Nation of Fire and Kingdom of Alice.

"Ooooh," she jeered as he turned his back to her. "Running away as soon as you _do _start getting turned on?" she baited shamelessly, and Natsume's tense hand rested on the handle of the door. "What are you afraid of? Was I right, and you really don't know how to handle a girl properly? Or are you _actually _gay?" she squeaked again, as if the self-same question could be a surprise her twice in one evening.

Natsume chuckled, and after running his hand through his hair realized he had left his hat by the chair anyway. He slowly turned back, reaching across his own body with one hand and undoing the buttons on his cuffs.

"You're persistent, you know that," he said as he swapped hands and undid the buttons of the other wrist.

"I get told that a lot," she replied, crossing over to him and trying to start undoing the buttons down the front of his jacket, but he slapped her hands away.

"I'm not a baby," he said sharply, reaching up to start unbuttoning with the high, stiff collar and working slowly down. When at last he shrugged the jacket off, straightened it out and hung it up on a coat stand, Mikan looked bored senseless.

"We don't do uniform inspections around here," she said caustically. "No one is going to dock you for a creased jacket."

"I choose to look smart," he replied coolly, popping out the cuff links of his bleached shirt and carefully rolling up the sleeves. He stopped there, and Mikan's eyes widened slightly.

"That's it?" she gasped, and didn't realize the recurrence of the phrase.

"That," Natsume said, noticing the repetition himself, "is, as they say, _it."_

"Well, forgive me for my unknowing Alician ways, but aren't you going to find it hard to screw with all that on?"

"Simple," he answered, "I'm not going to. All you challenged, other than my sexuality, was my skill with women. I do not need to be undressed to show you that." He knew that he was being proud, and was aware that he'd fallen for one of the oldest tricks in the book as no doubt many had before him, but he was sure that he'd make this experience unique for her, because he doubted many Neanderthal enlisted men they sent through here knew the first thing about what he was going to do. These girls were trained to please others, like lapdogs. He would simply show her how good certain kinds of petting could be.

"Aren't you confidant?" she posed flirtatiously, slinking up to him with her hands on the belt of her robe.

"Don't remove it," he instructed. "_If _I choose to undress you, I can do it myself."

"Uh huh, control freak," she said with a roll of her eyes. "You going to be using those restraints on the bed too? Shall I call you daddy?" she teased effortlessly, but Natsume didn't stir.

"Won't be necessary," he answered blankly, and then leaned in a little so that he could speak softly to her. "Close your eyes," he instructed, and Mikan obeyed; being a submissive was nothing new to her, although Natsume had been giving off an impression that was a _little _interesting to her. After all, she rarely got a guy who not only wasn't jumping out of his clothes at the door, but _wouldn't _get out of them even when expected to.

He put a hand on her upper arm and guided her the short distance over to the bed. "Sit," he commanded, and she slowly bent at the knees, feeling for the bed with her hands before she sat properly. He let go, and she felt him sitting beside her and heard the ropey flicks of Natsume undoing the laces of his boots hurriedly.

"Keep them closed," he reminded her, pulling off his long army boots and placing them neatly by the bed before crawling back on it, circling around Mikan until he was directly behind her. At long last, he reached out to touch her, and possibly from the anticipation, or maybe just in surprise, she jumped. He brushed two of his fingers from the centre of her back up to her neck, feeling the luxurious, expensive feel of the silk robe draped so artistically across her body, and then traced along the curve of her shoulder blade, raising his other hand to match and pressing his thumbs softly into her skin in the centre of her back.

He applied a little more pressure and rubbed up, and she rolled into the contact like a cat. He began to rub a deep circle across her upper back, and pushed with his fingers into her neck and the back of her shoulders to loosen her muscles there. She sighed in enjoyment, and he took it as a free licence to continue. He dropped his hands lower and began to thumb small circles right from the very base of her spine upwards, pausing occasionally to work out a particularly tight knot.

He had lulled her into such a state of relaxation, that when he stroked his hands all the way down her back once more, but this time lowered his mouth onto the curve of her neck at the same time, massaging the tendered muscles with his lips, she twitched in surprise.

She tasted fantastic. Whatever they gave their women to put on their skin after washing, it was nicer than any of the meagre rations he'd been surviving on for years now. He'd almost forgotten what fine food tasted like, but he supposed she would have to do. Sweet, like honey, but not sticky, and ever so slightly milky, with just a hint of some kind of herb underneath it, mingling with the natural scent of her body. He reached up and dragged her collar down with one finger, opening up more space as he slowly teased his way up and down her neck.

He nipped, but did not suck, because that created unsightly welts that were slow to fade, whereas teeth marks would disappear so long as he didn't bruise her, and he was priding himself on his gentleness... for now. She sighed and gasped, feeding him her reactions carefully, so that he knew where felt best, where made her squirm.

As he got up as high as her ear, and traced the very tip of his tongue across the inner shape, so that only the faintest brush of moisture remained on her skin, he then pressed his lips close to her and murmured, "Still got them closed?" lowly to her, and she nodded as she rolled her shoulder back against his hand, which clasped her still and pawed at her muscles.

He moved her easily when he wished to, his strength matching her weight and then some, and her smooth, buttermilk skin sliding over the sheets effortlessly. He drew her back and slowly pushed her down, until she lay flat on her back. He caught her peeking at him. He raised an eyebrow at her, so she let her eyelids droop closed again and heaved a sigh as she felt his hand trail up from her midriff to her breastbone, lifting lightly and settling on one side of her.

Mikan got attention like this sometimes from the men, but it was not a frequent thing, and it had never been done so artistically as now. Natsume had said he was going to show her he knew how, so all _she_ had to do was relax and enjoy it.

Enjoy it she did. He wasn't exactly an unattractive man, meaning he was actually quite a looker – for the enemy – and was doing all right so far, meaning pretty damn well. He barely touched her front, only trailing his fingers along the length of her body, like he was reminding himself how a woman was shaped and felt, and then he rolled her over onto her front, straddled her legs and resumed massaging her back.

"I'm going to fall asleep at this rate," she purred – back massage was nice, and he was very good at it, but it wasn't really much of a turn on.

"Patience," he replied simply. "The back is the holding pin for the body." She may not have followed what he meant, but Natsume had his eye on the bigger picture. The more he opened her up through her back, the more supple and open the rest of her body could be – it was the base of the body, not to mention the spine was the central column of the nervous system. In short, he knew what he was doing.

He gripped her around the pelvis and pushed down hard against the mattress, combing out any muscle tension from her lower back, and opening up her hips, and when he was content at last he rolled her back.

"Feel great to begin with, and you'll feel even better when I _really _start," he told her seductively, and without hesitation moved until he was directly over her, one of his knees between her legs, but not touching her, and his hands braced on either side. Mikan couldn't deny she was a _little_ excited, and she did feel pretty loose and nice after the massage now. She had expected him to move on to actually touching her in more erogenous places next, as well as opening the robe, but once again, he did not do what she expected.

He kissed her.

It was not brutal and passionate, but it wasn't gentle either... _firm_, assured, and like everything else about him, very patient. He didn't rush any single thing, but gave each equal attention and care, before moving on to the next.

She had opened her eyes, but she closed them again now, melting into the kiss and wrapping an arm around his neck. Some of it was instinct – moan, sigh, and look like you're having the best orgasm of your life from start to finish, but there was an awful lot of it that was natural, which was a little unusual considering she'd been here for well over a year now, and hadn't _felt _anything with a single one of the men she'd been with in that time.

She'd had good sex, sure, it was in her own interests to do that, but she hadn't felt... _want _before. Not for so little, not for just the promise that he'd carry on touching her.

She parted her lips against him and tilted her head to press her mouth more fully against his, moving her tongue up and out to tangle with his, which was ready and waiting, and quickly took dominance like he was born to have it.

Maybe it was because he was the age of someone she'd date if she was a free girl, maybe it was because he was _also_ good-looking too, or maybe it was wholly because he wasn't treating her like a whore, but a woman. She grasped his shirt in her free hand and pulled him closer, realizing at that moment that he had moved his knee ever so slightly, and now it pressed between her legs non-invasively. He did not move it any further, so it was down to her to move on it if she wanted to.

He kissed her like it was all there was to it, like there was nothing else he intended to do, and for that reason it drew on and on like a gentle walk through the country. Ambling and aimless pleasure, not following a particular path, and not taking any directions on the way.

She hadn't realized that she was softly rolling her hips against his leg until he slowly pulled away and smirked at her. _How do you like me now_, his expression read, and she twisted her lips in confused response.

"You guys keep toys here?" he asked her coolly, and for a moment she lay blank as she tried to work out what the hell he was talking about.

"Oh, _oh_," she gasped as she realized he meant sex toys. "Of course. Under the bed." He quickly moved aside and pulled out one of the drawers underneath them, and the rush of air that followed him ghosted across a fine sweat on her skin. "Not ashamed to use a little help, then?" she teased as she heard him sifting through the assortment of toys in every shape and size known to man.

"I don't need help," he replied calmly, as he rolled a vibrating bullet between his fingers. "I assume they're all clean."

"Well duh," she retorted; they weren't _that _bad here, and she had no desire to use dirty toys either. "Then why dive into the box of fun? Lots of guys wouldn't even dare to _look _in there, let alone get something out to use. I think you all see it like some sort of emasculation."

"A sculptor doesn't carve a stone with his bare hands," Natsume replied. "Nor does the painter paint with his fingers."

"Oh, very artistic," she replied with a giggle. "You sure do take this seriously, don't you?"

"My hands can do a lot," he said with a grin, having selected a small, palm-sized vibrating toy, and currently experimenting with the controls. "Can't vibrate, though. There's no shame in expanding your tools to accommodate the things you cannot replicate. You can't climax on a man's pride."

"Very enlightened," she remarked. "I think you should write a book about that."

"Are you mocking me?" he said coldly, and she shook her head furiously.

"Oh no, I like what you're saying, I wish _more _guys thought like that," she explained guiltlessly.

"Ah, good," he responded shortly, his attention returning to the task at hand. He dropped the toy on the bed within reach, and returned to kiss her again, this time combining it with a hand slipping underneath the hem of her robe by her collarbone, and sliding slowly down until it reached her breast. He waited until she started shuffling to try to encourage him before he actually curled his fingers around the soft mass, and found the nipple with his forefinger and thumb.

She gasped and arched into him, and when he changed his hands for his mouth, having drawn it away from her own swollen lips, she actually raised one of her hands to muffle the sound she made.

"How can you be shy?" he asked scathingly, raising his mouth from her hardened nipple to speak, and in the process blowing cold air across the saliva-wetted skin, which tingled cold and made her chest heave. As he moved across to the other nipple, drawing back her robe as he did, she felt his fingertips trailing across her inner thigh.

He didn't jump the gun, though – that wasn't his style. He tickled and teased a spider's web of touches along her sensitive skin until it was almost unbearable, before he finally relented, and drew a single finger up from the slick, wet entrance of her sex up through the surrounding folds and across her clitoris. She released a relieved breath and angled her hips higher, pleading for him to continue.

He trailed his mouth across to her breast bone, and trailed his face slowly down her stomach, until his chin hit her pubic bone. He had his middle finger inside her to the knuckle, just teasing, really, and his thumb circled her clit lazily. She let out a cry of frustration, and then one of satisfaction, as he slunk back even further and his tongue replaced his fingers against her sex.

She even tasted good down here, he observed as he stroked his tongue up and down once, pushing aside the blood-swollen folds of her vagina and penetrating her as far as he could. Mikan moaned softly, and gripped her own hair when he moved upwards to focus on her clitoris fully, sucking and running his tongue heavily across it. He reached for the toy so slowly she didn't even notice, and it wasn't until she heard the sound of the motor that drove the vibration start up that she remembered he'd even got it.

The toy was curved and shaped specifically to stimulate around the vagina and not in it, and when Natsume pressed the lowest-intensity vibration against the liquid-feel of her already inflamed genitals, she cried into her own hand again and her hips bucked.

"Give me your hand," he told her, rubbing the wetness from under his lips as she registered his instruction and extended a limp hand towards him. He took it in his and placed it over the toy; no matter how good he was, he couldn't get such refined things as the angle and pressure _perfect_, whereas she could. He still kept a hand on it, however, and his finger remained on the dial that controlled the strength of the vibration: _he _would control that.

So slowly he inched up the power, ignoring if Mikan pleaded or begged him for more, but going at his own pace, until it was _almost_ at the top. He cranked up the last bit suddenly, and she bucked again with a raw cry. He moved a little further up her body, so she could hear him as he urged her to come – to come for _him_, and she didn't really have much other choice.

She climaxed at last, rasping weakly into each gasp as she panted through the orgasm, as it tore through her whole body and made her shake uncontrollably, finally settling again like silt on a riverbed, and feeling the layer of perspiration spiral off her skin into the air.

Natsume removed the vibrator and turned it off, wiping it briefly on the bedsheet before tossing it onto the floor.

"I think that settles that," he said smugly, and sat upright with an air of departure.

"You're not... going... are you?" she panted, opening her eyes to half-mast to observe him.

"I think I proved myself pretty damn well," he stated, "that _was _all I intended to do."

"Ohh?" Mikan lulled, sitting up slowly and fighting the light-headedness. "So what's _that _all about, then?" It didn't need naming, it was obvious enough that she meant the rather impressive erection straining what _had _to be uncomfortably against Natsume's uniform trousers.

"I'm only human." he replied sourly, almost annoyed that his body had reacted in such a way. Mikan extended a hand to squeeze around the hardened length and he winced his eyes closed and bit his lower lip hard, shuddering with the contact.

"I can see that," she said playfully. "It's no crime. Here, I'll-" she lurched forwards and Natsume jerked to stop her.

"I don't..." he interrupted, his voice laboured and arms tense as he held her back by the shoulder.

"You don't sleep with... people like me, yeah," she said bitterly. "I got that. You don't have to, I'll just return the favour, okay?" To be fair, with her hand on his cock like that she could ask for pretty much anything and he would've agreed, so he sighed and let her lean him back, delicately freeing his erection from his uniform – he wore no underwear, as the uniform trousers were cut in such a way that they couldn't be worn with them. He wasn't sure if she noticed, because she obviously got a lot of soldiers in here, but if she did she said nothing.

He heaved a massive sigh of release as she unhesitatingly closed her mouth around the head of his cock and sucked – this was _her _territory now. A practised act that she had probably done hundreds of times. He had no time for his sense of anonymity now though, not when it felt that _good_.

Whereas he had teased her until she wanted to scream for him to hurry up, she did not waste any time toying with him, but moved steadily from just giving him head to taking in more and more of his length, until she licked all the way from the base up to the very tip, soaking up the beads of precome that had formed there, and then swallowed him entirely.

It was almost all Natsume could do not to come hard and heavy right then; she had taken him off guard, and he hadn't expected her to so easily take him that deep into her mouth. He could feel his head at the back of her throat, almost _down _it, and realized she couldn't possibly breathe like that.

As she drew back, snatching a gasp of air, he panted himself.

"Holy fuck," he said. "That's a trick and a half." He looked down at her, and she grinned back at him mischievously.

"Told you I was good," she remarked, and then as she finished speaking slowly curled her tongue around his cock, just below the head, making eye contact with him the whole time. He hadn't thought he'd find that a turn-on, but the way it seemed like she was really _enjoying _giving him head only made his cock throb harder. Watching her do it, as she looked back at him perfectly knowing, and even _revelling _in the act, only made that aspect stronger.

She began to suck him steadily, going down on a deep stroke every few strokes or so, but mostly staying within her own gag reflex, and making sure that her lips were tight around him, so that the engorged ridge of his head rubbed back and penetrated through the ring of her mouth with each stroke.

She had a point; she certainly was a hell of a lot better than any girl who had given him oral sex before. She was _incomparable_. It was like he'd never had a proper blowjob until today, and he got fantastically close to coming several times, but held himself back just so he could see how good it could get.

However, it had not been ten minutes when she wrapped a finger and thumb around the very base of his cock and lifted her mouth off him completely.

"Hey," he protested feebly, almost out of his head on pleasure, "what the..." Before he knew it, she was straddling him and the hot, wet slit of her sex was pressed up against the base of his cock and his balls, and the neat patch of her pubic hair bristled against the underside of the shaft.

"I know you said you don't, but you've _got_ to change your mind," she said with a curious mix of a command and plea. "_Please_," she outright begged, and her hips ground against him slowly, and she rolled back her head, until her neck was stretched out as far as it could go, when she quietly panted the words, "...fuck me."

Perhaps he _should _have cared and didn't, perhaps he had stopped thinking of her as a whore, or perhaps he was just too damn horny to think straight, but Natsume didn't need asking twice. He grabbed her by the hips, lifted her up as if she wasn't any more than a feather pillow, and drove her down roughly onto his hard, hard cock.

She was still tight from her orgasm previous, and as her ass slapped down against his legs, filling her completely, she outright screamed and arched her back, tangling her hands in her own hair. Now that loosening up he'd given her made a difference, and he felt the tight rings of muscle pulsing around his cock as she nearly came there and then, just from being penetrated once.

It had definitely been far too long since he'd had sex, Natsume realized as he settled back into the feeling of a woman again, and after a moment for them both to catch their breath, guided her into moving against him, at first only rolling her hips in a long circular motion without raising up off him, sighing as the internal massage made her clench around him.

Eventually she began to raise herself up off him and fuck properly, but he interjected after a minute or so by lifting her forcefully until the head of his cock almost slipped out of her for a second before he slammed her back down with the same force as before. She cried out again, and even he groaned hoarsely as the hard, deep fuck rocketed through them. It couldn't be gentle now, he knew, because she was not screaming herself stupid for nothing.

He pulled out long enough to flip their positions, throwing her down underneath him and folding up her legs above her head, pressing her knees together so the pale oval of her underside was bared up to him fully. He slapped his hand down sharply against her thigh and heard her catch her own voice in her throat, shuddering with the smack and then beginning to pant in anticipation as he positioned the head of his cock against her entrance precisely.

He plunged into her with even more force this time, going down deep with this new angle and throwing his weight into her like a sledgehammer. She screamed animalistically at first, then fell into rasping the words "Oh fuck, oh _fuck_," as he felt her coming in a tight seizure around his cock. This wasn't any act, he knew that for sure, because the sounds she made were not at all pleasing or articulate – she didn't sound like a woman experiencing ecstasy, she sounded like something _dying, _so he had no doubt that it was all real.

He paused for a moment to recover himself, then started to pound into her rhythmically, shutting his eyes and just _feeling _as she moaned and came beneath him. How could something he thought would be so _fake _be this good? It was because it wasn't fake, he discovered as Mikan had another wave of orgasm and he felt her nails digging hard into his forearms, like she might be blown clear away if she didn't have something to hold on to.

They may have been almost total strangers, meeting in a brothel on the orders of one's boss and one's captor, but there was nothing prearranged or sterile about this sex. Something had just _clicked_ between them, a sexual chemistry that ignored race and rank, that simply took them both by the gut and bellowed _yes _into their ears until they couldn't resist.

It was submersed in that, the all-consuming passion that had wiped away anything other than their existences to each other, that Natsume came at last; one of the best orgasms he'd _ever_ had, filling her deep and then falling slack against her in total exhaustion.

He panted once, licked his lips, and then spoke. "When the fuck did _that _happen?" he questioned limply, and Mikan laughed equally feebly, and he felt the contractions echo all the way down to her vagina, pulsing several times against his deflating erection.

"You tell me," she replied, wincing with the cold air as Natsume pulled out and then flopped down beside her.

"I really don't think I remember anything after you put my cock in your mouth," he said with an exhausted chuckle. "Although, that _had _to be above and beyond the call of duty," he remarked, watching her carefully, as she seemed as completely annihilated as he was, and he was sure that she couldn't manage _that _on a regular basis.

"Oh believe me, that was _not _part of the regular service," she replied, folding out her legs carefully while stroking her fingers over the bright red handprint that tingled on the back of her leg. "I don't think I'm going to sit right for a week," she bemoaned.

"Glad to hear it," he said proudly, and after she gave him a very scathing look he deigned to explain. "I hate the anonymity of... _this."_

"Ohh," she hummed contently. "I see. Well consider mission accomplished, I'm not likely to forget this for a while."

"Remember _me_, not sex," he insisted selfishly, and then hesitated as he considered saying what it was he wanted to say. Mikan watched him, and for the first time since he'd set foot in the room saw a true flash of the twenty-something opposite her. It was unlikely he was any more than twenty-three, like she was, and she felt vaguely comforted to see that underneath the tough army exterior and his 'elevated' position as a national of the Nation of Fire, he was actually a normal guy.

"Go on," she urged. "Say you'll come back. You know you want to." Not to mention _she _wanted him to. For the first time since she'd been sent here, she'd felt as if she wasn't just doing a job, one that was necessary to preserve herself. She'd felt free again, like she'd had a choice for _once _in this dammed and blasted war.

"My libido wants to," he replied bluntly, undoing a few of the buttons on his shirt to get some air to his skin as he did up his fly. He'd not even undressed, and now his sex and sweat ridden uniform smothered him horribly. "But... this was just a one off."

"Well why can't you just come back to see me as a friend?" she inquired optimistically. "We're friends, aren't we? _Na_–tsu–_me_?" Her voice danced on the emphasised syllables, airy and playful once more.

"Well..." he murmured, unsure of what to say. He didn't want to become yet another soldier hopelessly chasing the tail of a prostitute, pouring affection onto a girl who merely toyed with it as a flavour of the week – he had plenty of those in his unit, he was not going to become another. On the other hand...

"Ok," he said at last, not sure how much he believed his own words. "I'll come back. As a friend." He looked at her pointedly. "That means no sex." He was not going to be trapped that way, not to mention he was only posted here as a respite from two long years on the front lines. It was very likely that they would be moved again before the year was out.

She crossed herself with a grin a mile wide. "Cross my heart and hope to die." Natsume resisted the urge to grin as idiotically as she was for a moment. It was catchy.

"Friends, then," he proposed, sitting up and extending his hand towards her, as she had towards him.

"Friends," she returned, sliding her robe back over her shoulders as she sat up and took his hand, shaking it primly with an honest smile.

"You're a funny one," he remarked, realizing the acute bizarreness of professing himself 'friends' with anyone, let alone a whore he had known for all of an hour.

"I get told that a lot too," she giggled. "Still, when this wretched war is over and I am freed I'll make sure to look you up before I go home. I promise." She gave him a smile so honest it could have killed him.

"Go home?" he echoed disbelievingly. "You surely don't think...?" He met her gaze, and saw that she was deadly serious. "What if you have children here?" he questioned, and in response, Mikan simply shook her head and raised a single finger to her lips, trusting him instantly to keep her secret. He wondered how she was doing it: pills, diaphragms, implants, but didn't dare to ask, for fear of voicing a secret that could've thrown her life into the balance if it was overheard.

"_When _this war is over," she said, her accent dusting over the words as if it could enchant them to be true, "and my Kingdom is liberated, I will return home."

"Your Kingdom will not win," Natsume told her bluntly. "You should know that."

"That is what _you_ choose to think," she replied vaguely, fastening her robe and resettling herself on the bed peacefully. "_I _know better."

He shouldn't have had any reason to believe her; he was an Officer, he had been there on the front lines, and he _knew _that they were winning. But something in her voice and eyes told him that she knew something he did not, something that _no one _in the Nation of Fire knew, and that they were all fooling themselves.

"Hmph, we will see," he said stonily, and shifted like he wanted to get up.

"We will," she teased, slinking up to him until she was draped over his shoulder. "Are you going now?"

"Yes," he answered, but didn't move straight away and lingered instead, like an invisible fish hook through his lip was holding him back for something.

"Can friends still kiss?" Mikan asked sweetly, crawling closer still.

"God I hope so," he rushed, and the next second his mouth clashed with hers in a mess of teeth and tongue. He pulled back before he got too carried away, and then rose up from the bed.

"What will you do?" she inquired chastely, wiping her lips dry again as she watched him go.

"Walk, I think," he replied. "Get some fresh air." He also wanted to stride out of the sex coma she'd left him sinking slowly into like a peat bog.

"Goodbye then, Natsume," she said almost prophetically. "I hope I'll see you soon."

"Goodbye," he bade, and then, collecting his cap and unhooking his jacket from the stand, he paused for one last moment, "...Mikan." He had not said her name until then, but before she could react he was gone.

She watched the closed door for a while, and then with a sigh stood up and headed towards the washroom to clean herself up. She stared at herself in the mirror for an unusually long time, but saw nothing she was looking for in her reflection.

The woman with the acrylic nails and the baby on her hip was still on the counter as Natsume left, his jacket folded over one arm and his shirt several buttons undone. He didn't make eye contact with her, as he knew she'd only have something crude to say to him and he did not want to hear it. He winced in the sunlight as he stepped outside, and felt the fresh, clean air on his face. Being inside the FPC had distorted everything, and he breathed heavily as he ran his hands back through his hair in the real world once more.

Friends she said. _Friends_.

He never saw her again.

His unit was posted to the Eastern branch of the Armed Division a week or two later, and he never returned to the area in which that FPC had been situated. He had thought of her sometimes, but not often – not outside of his dreams or sexual fantasy, at least.

* * *

_Epilogue_

* * *

It was three years later, after the war of Alice had been fought and lost. After it had been discovered that the ancient traditions of the average Alician were more than just quaint, that they were a set of standards that made every man, woman and child in the Kingdom of Alice a ready-made guerilla fighter, and that the moment soldiers from the Nation of Fire tried to occupy any area of strategic importance, their troops would begin to die in the dozens, like flowers wilting in the heat, until they were forced to withdraw. There could be no fingers pointed or individuals punished, not effectively, because it was the _entire people _who were against them.

So it was learned that the very _nature _of the Alician people made them uncontrollable by another force, that even if their King was forced to sign a surrender, that they would not yield. The battles could be won, but no land could ever be claimed from the Kingdom. The Board had lost, and the Nation of Fire had to agree to a ceasefire that made the entire venture no more than an expensive waste of time and resources.

Captain Natsume Hyuuga was looking forwards to going home and spending some time with his family now that the ceasefire was settled; he was packed, ready to go, his ticket for the transport to his hometown in his pocket, when he discovered a single slip of card in his mailing slot on the way out.

_Dear Friend,_ it read, the flipside simply containing his P.O. Box and address of the unit.

_I keep my promises, so even though it was bloody hard to find you, and I don't know if you even remember me, here goes nothing. _

_If you ever travel to my country, first burn your uniform before you even set foot at the border, and second know that all you have to do is ask for the Sakura Family in the town of Kairin to find me. I'd welcome you as a true friend._

_Mikan._

Natsume stared at it for at least five minutes, his lips silently mouthing the words he could barely believe were there. Inside the lining of his coat, another slip of paper burned. He reached inside it and pulled out the transport ticket that was taking him home.

In a single violent motion he grabbed it by the middle and tore it in two. He dumped his Army issue overcoat in a skip on the way out of the HQ, swapped his uniform jacket with an elderly man at the transport station that would take him to the border, and purchased non-uniform trousers from a thrift-vendor while he was hitchhiking the last few miles to the Alician border.

His family had gone six years without seeing him, they could go a month more, he reasoned, as he followed the fish-hook pull that had no reason or rationality; it just whispered the word '_come' _over and over, until he didn't think about the sense of it anymore, just tried to get where it wanted him to go.

He picked up the necessities of their language surprisingly fast – it was very similar to his own, which is why they were so transferable, and only once got attacked for being recognised as a NoF national, and he sent the drunkard flying anyway.

He was sitting on a train, his arms crossed over his chest tightly to try to ward away the bitter cold, and his forehead pressed against the frosty glass. This would take him to Constantope, the closest city to Kairin, and from there he could hitchhike or get transported as a temporary hand for any trading business that headed that way. The war had been won at a great cost to the Kingdom, and they were so short on young men that the half-blood children that mothers from the FPCs had returned with had been granted full Alician status out of necessity, so even _he _could easily find work to assist his journey.

He dozed off without realizing, and dreamt of her. She wore the same silk robe, but now was standing in the open air, away from the brothel and all of its tawdry mess. She smiled at him and extended a soft, honeyed hand, and her lips moved wordlessly, but he knew what she was saying anyway.

_Welcome, Na–tsu–me. It's been too long._

_

* * *

_Well... that was that, I guess. Hell knows what it was all about, I just thought 'What would be a good way to shove it to a Lemon contest, I know, I'll make Mikan a prostitute!' and then the rest happened as 'Circumstances to bring about the former.'

Apparently the bunnies think that a semi-historical AU with a side order of the dystopian is the easiest way to rationalise Mikan as a whore and Natsume as someone who would go to one. And I think we _all _know that you don't argue with the bunnies, and mine decided to merge Stalin's Russia, Nazi Lebensborn in reverse, the Vietnam War and a little bit of dystopian fantasty just to add flavour.

The product is this, I hope someone with an interest in more than just the lemon got some kind of enjoyment out of it. Thank you for reading.


End file.
